With the kids it’s easy — they look at their mom out of the corner of their eye and state half as many as they will eat, which everyone knows.
With the adults it’s trickier, because you have to figure out who is going to summon superhuman self control to keep to their “diet” and who is going to say the heck with it as soon as the puris appear.
More like a poker hand than a math problem
One person’s count also changes depending on whether the puris are being fried hot as we eat (meaning someone is frying first and eating later) vs being fried all at once. Same person also eats cold (leftover) puris as long as they are available, which is very confusing.
Somehow my mom has everyone’s number. Never fallen short, and always a few left for the cold-puri-snackers not to be disappointed, but not too many that they will get thrown away.
Mom’s appetite is thankfully coming back, so we are weaving in lighter favorites to tempt her to eat a bit more each day.
Tonight we had one of her signature dishes: cauliflower cheese. Her portion was light on butter and cheese. Accompanied by toasted focaccia.
The rest of us had her regular version of cauliflower cheese, plus chicken liver crostini on garlic bread. I’ve loved chicken liver since childhood days when my dad would fry up a batch as a special snack on days he went to the market, as soon as he got back, before he started cleaning and organizing his purchases (on fish market days it was fried prawns, and both were occasionally wrapped in bacon which took them completely over the top .)
I also cooked gizzards for the first time ever – sis enjoys them, but it was not something our family ever ate, she learned to eat it at a friends’ house. Made those with some masala blend I made up as I went along: she hasn’t complained yet so hopefully it turned out okay.
Monsoon is in full swing, which calls for hot tea and fried snacks! But - mom’s tummy is still recovering, so I lightened up the batter and swapped deep frying for the appe pan (like an aebleskiver or takoyaki pan, but the South Indian version). Mom ate 4, so that was a resounding success.
I will warn you that I used a large cast iron skillet and the topping was not enough to cover. So you may want to scale up or use a smaller pan. @Desert-Dan
Excellent and might be my new favorite summer pasta salad! The breadcrumbs were an unexpected and fun textural component that held up better than I thought they might with the dressing.
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